In a Priest Driven Ambulance

The Flaming Lips: Stinky (vocals, guitar); Dingus (guitar); Michael (bass); Nathan (drums).
The fourth Flaming Lips album, IN A PRIEST DRIVEN AMBULANCE, is also their first great record. Earlier ones have had bright spots (numerous in the case of TELEPATHIC SURGERY), but this is the real deal. Each song is listed with a running time of 3 minutes and 26 seconds, a patented falsehood and an indication that this record is out to subvert your expectations. It is a masterpiece of true no-holds-barred weirdness.
The beautiful (despite its naughty language) "Five Stop Mother Superior Rain" features soaring guitars, a pretty, understated trumpet, and Wayne Coyne's nasal but very affecting vocals. In true Coyne style, "Mountain Side" is a crunching rocker, full of reverb and echo and pummeling drums, disguising a tender love song shot through by the strangest imagery ever to appear in a love song, "And I'm holding your electric toaster / while standing in your bathtub of love." The album closes with a cover of the Louie Armstrong standard "What a Wonderful World" that is genuinely heartfelt, in that peculiarly Lips-y kind of way. As an added bonus, the CD reissue tacks on two of the tracks from the vinyl-only UNCONSCIOUSLY SCREAMIN' single.